These poems gives voice to the people who came on the first ships from
the Caribbean, whose journeys held strange echoes of earlier sea voyages
which had brought ancestors from Africa to the slave plantations. James
Berry - from Jamaica - was one of these emigrants, settling in Britain
in 1948. This late collection by Berry explores the different reasons he
and his fellow travellers had for leaving the Caribbean when they rushed
to get on the boat. This publication was linked with events marking the
200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. The poems also look back
on slavery and individual experiences of hardship and trying to make a
living: 'Mi one milkin cow just die! / Gone, gone - and leave me / Like
hurricane disaster!' Windrush Songs ranges from from lyrical pictures of
Caribbean country life to poems in the voices of travellers with
desires, fears, anxieties, hopes and ambitions. James Berry came to
Britain on the next ship after the Windrush and shared many of the
experiences that prompted this migration in search of change and a
better life. Many of the poems from Windrush were included in James
Berry's A Story I Am In: New & Selected Poems, but renewed interest in
Windrush Songs has prompted its reissue.
